


Burnt Ground

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 18:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13253808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: “In order reach the dawn, you have to go through the night, Severus.”Through the night, he had said.And yet Severus Snape was still waiting for his bloody dawn, he was waiting to watch the sun rise, to feel its rays on his skin, to catch in the air a nuance, a sign... something telling him that hope was still on his side.





	Burnt Ground

Broken.

That’s how he felt.

Broken in his body, and in those little remains of soul which he felt slipping away from him, faster and faster.

He had done is part for the greater good, but what he had done for the evil still managed to prevail, taking away from him the only affection he had in the world.

He had _promised._

_“In order reach the dawn, you have to go through the night, Severus.”_

Through the night, he had said.

And yet Severus Snape was still waiting for his bloody dawn, he was waiting to watch the sun rise, to feel its rays on his skin, to catch in the air a nuance, a sign... something telling him that hope was still on his side.

But there was nothing, and the days went bay taking with them the memory of a woman torn apart in her prime, and the face of a man, that for her had spilt all his tears, and whose heart had now become impenetrable.

 

_He had entered the Headmaster’s office, with an impetuousness that didn’t really belong to him._

_“Good evening, Severus.” Dumbledore had said, his voice calm._

_His gaze was tarnished with a sadness that Snape had never seen on his face._

_But nothing,_ nothing, _could be compared to his own pain._

_“You had sworn!” he shouted. The man in front of him sighed, standing up from his chair._

_“I had sworn to you that I was going to do my best to protect her, Severus. But I couldn’t have imagined that Sirius...” he shut up abruptly, as if suddenly stricken by remorse._

_In any other circumstance, Severus could’ve understood him, even admitting that guilt was something he knew all too well, despite the fact that he had learnt to live with it._

_But not now. Not when he could still feel on himself a revolting stench of death, not when Lily’s corpse still had its eyes open wide for the terror and the blind rage of a mother who’s sacrificed her life for her son._

_Severus’ hate was immense, universal._

_He didn’t know who it was for, the Headmaster, Lily herself, Voldemort... or if he actually blamed himself for having put her in the condition of being a prey, for having allowed the Dark Lord to hunt her down so viciously._

_But in that moment he was there, in front of Dumbledore, who for the first time looked just like an old man._

_He didn’t want compassion, he wanted answers._

_Or, at least, hearing that it wasn’t his fault, even though he wasn’t going to believe that._

_“I’m sorry, Severus.” the Headmaster had said, with a look that admitted that, on that day, a part of themselves had died alongside the Potter family._

_Dead, but he could still feel it burning._

“Good evening, Severus.”

A weird sensation of déjà vu stroke the teacher, who shivered.

The Headmaster was sitting at his desk, and didn’t even look when Severus came in.

He was staring at a house of cards in front of him, as if thinking about the next move.

“Did you call for me?” Severus asked, with that off tone he’d had for the past few weeks.

There was no room anymore for screams inside of him, it all had dulled when he had realized that the sins they all committed would’ve requested their price in a hell that right now was still looking afar.

“Yes, I called for you. I just wanted to know how have you been doing.” the man said, resting a card on top of the others, with incredible slowness.

“I’m fine.” the other replied quickly, knowing how clear his lie was.

Dumbledore sighed and finally looked at him. He kept quiet for a few moments, as if he was trying to look inside the younger man, with that particular quality of his that went well over Legimency, and that seemed to be able to sound out the depths of human soul.

 _Wasted time_ he would’ve liked to tell him. _I don’t own a soul._

“Can you see this house of cards?” the Headmaster asked him. “It’s fragile, delicate. It would take the smallest breeze to make it fall.” he pointed at the lowest line of cards. “If I were to take out the base it would fall, it would be ruined. And I could make another one, but it would never be exactly the same as this.” Severus, slightly annoyed, interrupted him.

“I suppose you didn’t make me come here to talk about houses of cards.” he ironized, and Dumbledore smiled.

“Human beings are also like this. If you take the foundations out, the bedrock where they have built their whole lives, they get destroyed. And they are never the same anymore.” he explained. Severus sneered.

“Established that you’re talking about me, and it would make no sense otherwise, I’ve got to say I have no intentions of getting back to what I was before. But I guess that’s easily deducible, isn’t it?” Dumbledore sighed one more time.

“Remember what I told you? That to reach the dawn you have to go through the night. You’ve had your night, Severus, quite literally. That night a few months ago, the night where the pillars of your existence broke, just like you did. I’m not saying you’d like to get back being the man you once were, the one who sold the prophecy to Voldemort. I’m just saying that you’d like to have your pillar back, that you’d like _her_ back, and you really can’t say anything to deny it.” his voice was still, decided. Severus shook his head bitterly, ascertaining that what the Headmaster was saying was very close to obvious.

And he would’ve admitted it willingly, if only the mere thought of what had happened didn’t cause him an incurable stabbing pain, surges of disgust for himself and for that self-inflicted fate.

In a sort of uncontrollable fit he banged the hand on the table, tearing down the house of cards.

It was the first true sign of rage he had allowed himself in a long time, and for some weird reason it made him feel better.

“You’re wrong. Lily’s death didn’t undermine the foundations of my existence. It crumbled down on my like my hand on the cards. I’m not a ruined house, I’m burnt ground. It’s like the Dark Lord spread salt on my ashes, and we both know that salt makes the ground barren. So, no, there is nothing to re-build.”

“And are you willing to spend the rest of your life paying for your mistake? Do you want for anguish to keep following you, like you have no way out?” Dumbledore replied, his eyes suddenly severe.

“But I _don’t_ have a way out. In my mind I’ve tried to clear out everything that’s happened, I’ve tried to clean it, but it’s like a faulty broom has left imperceptible traces of dust. Her lifeless body, the last words I told her, the moment I told the Dark Lord about the prophecy. And they’re there. There’s nothing that could make my conscience pure once again, there’s nothing I can do to lighten the gravity of what I’ve done to her. And to myself.” he felt the tears pressing to come out, but he forbade himself to cry.

Barren, like salted ground.

Barren, his face, which didn’t deserve a drop of pain.

Dumbledore stared at the cards, untidy in front of him. Then he raised his eyes on Severus, a gaze expressing all the compassion the man never felt to deserve.

An executioner didn’t deserve to be treated as a victim.

And, as much as the Headmaster could try to convince him, he was not the victim, not when there was a woman underground, her eyes forced close, her skin ashen, her hands closed in fists over a bright sweater, its colour barely hiding the death prematurely laid down on her.

A colour mixing to each and every of Severus’ nightmares, together with the green of her eyes and the red of her blood, the same he had once called mud.

Silence was becoming unbearable, but neither of them seemed willing to speak.

As if Severus hadn’t said a thing, Dumbledore took the cards and started piling them up again.

Halfway done, he looked at him.

“You should try to re-build what’s crumbled down. Or to find a way to the dawn.” he commented, in a voice that Severus found ridiculously cheerful. He bit his lip, forcing himself to shut up, then he exited the Headmaster’s office, without another word.

Going down the stairs, his eyes were captured by the evening light coming aggressive from the window.

He stopped for just a moment, staring at February’s snow melting, slowly.

He too was surrounded in cold.

The sun was setting, and that cold ground knew that in a few hours its rays were going to come back to finish their work.

He had lost that certainty, or maybe he never had it to begin with.

But he wasn’t going to do anything.

After all, there was no future for burnt ground.


End file.
